The disclosure generally pertains to watermarking voice packets in a Voice-over-IP (“VoIP”) environment for various purposes, including measuring delay of information transfer in a communications network and providing audible information, including informational tones and announcements.
In various telecommunications applications, such as calls involving operator services, it is desirable to manipulate speech flows in various ways, for various purposes, including measuring delays between certain speech related events. Measuring speech delay is an important aspect of engineering a voice network, as excessive delay can lead to customer frustration and to a perception of poor customer service by the caller. For calls involving traditional circuit switched technology (referred to herein as “PSTN”), measuring such delay is well established for various applications, but such techniques are not readily transferable to a VoIP environment, which uses a fundamentally different underlying technology. Thus, there is a need for a simplified and easy to use system and method for measuring delay for voice-based calls involving VoIP calls involving a caller and an agent, including where the caller is associated with traditional circuit switched technologies.
Further, in VoIP environments, various audible information is required to be inserted at different times, associated with the provision of certain operator services. For example, calls received by agents may require an indication that a caller is now available on-line. This indication can be provided by inserting a brief audible informational tone to the agent. The use of traditional circuit switched technologies for providing such information tones and announcement is not readily transferable to a VoIP environment. Thus, there is a need for a simplified and easy to use system for inserting audible markers for voice based calls involving VoIP technologies.